Reading practice

Test 1
Text
When you picture mountain climbers scaling Mount Everest, what probably comes to mind are teams of climbers
with Sherpa guides leading them to the summit, equipped with oxygen masks, supplies and tents. And in most cases you'd
be right, as 97 per cent of climbers use oxygen to ascend to Everest's summit at 8,850 metres above sea level. The thin air
at high altitudes makes most people breathless at 3,500 metres, and the vast majority of climbers use oxygen past 7,000
metres. A typical climbing group will have 8-15 people in it, with an almost equal number of guides, and they'll spend
weeks to get to the top after reaching Base Camp.

But ultra-distance and mountain runner Kilian Jornet Burgada ascended the mountain in May 2017 alone, without an
oxygen mask or fixed ropes for climbing.

Oh, and he did it in 26 hours.

With food poisoning.

And then, five days later, he did it again, this time in only 17 hours.

Born in 1987, Kilian has been training for Everest his whole life. And that really does mean his whole life, as he grew up
2,000 metres above sea level in the Pyrenees in the ski resort of Lles de Cerdanya in Catalonia, north-eastern Spain.
While other children his age were learning to walk, Kilian was on skis. At one and a half years old he did a five-hour hike
with his mother, entirely under his own steam. He left his peers even further behind when he climbed his first mountain
and competed in his first cross-country ski race at age three. By age seven, he had scaled a 4,000er and, at ten, he did a
42-day crossing of the Pyrenees.

He was 13 when he says he started to take it 'seriously' and trained with the Ski Mountaineering Technical Centre
(CTEMC) in Catalonia, entering competitions and working with a coach. At 18, he took over his own ski-mountaineering
and trail-running training, with a schedule that only allows a couple of weeks of rest a year. He does as many as 1,140
hours of endurance training a year, plus strength training and technical workouts as well as specific training in the week
before a race. For his record-breaking ascent and descent of the Matterhorn, he prepared by climbing the mountain ten
times until he knew every detail of it, even including where the sun would be shining at every part of the day.

Sleeping only seven hours a night, Kilian Jornet seems almost superhuman. His resting heartbeat is extremely low at 33
beats per minute, compared with the average man's 60 per minute or an athlete's 40 per minute. He breathes more
efficiently than average people too, taking in more oxygen per breath, and he has a much faster recovery time after
exercise as his body quickly breaks down lactic acid - the acid in muscles that causes pain after exercise.
All this is thanks to his childhood in the mountains and to genetics, but it is his mental strength that sets him apart. He
often sets himself challenges to see how long he can endure difficult conditions in order to truly understand what his body
and mind can cope with. For example, he almost gave himself kidney failure after only drinking 3.5 litres of water on a
100km run in temperatures of around 40°C.

It would take a book to list all the races and awards he's won and the mountains he's climbed. And even

here, Kilian's achievements exceed the average person as, somehow, he finds time to record his career on his blog and has
written three books, Run or Die, The Invisible Border and Summits of My Life.

Question 1
Write the correct numbers to complete the sentences.

1. It's normal to find it hard to breathe at ________ metres above sea level.

2. Kilian reached the summit of Everest in _____ hours on his second attempt

3. He was ____ years old when he walked a long way without being carried.

4. At the age of _____ , he saw mountaineering as more than a hobby.

5. At age ____ he became his own trainer.

6. At ____ bpm, Kilian's pulse rate is much slower than even very fit people.

Question 2
1. His training includes...

A. psychological preparation. B. making sure he drinks enough water.

C.trying to reduce his recovery time. D. (none of the above)

2.Kilian's books are ...

A.a long list of races and awards. B. discouraging to average people.

C. best for an expert audience. D.another example of his impressive accomplishments.

3.Kilian partly owes his incredible fitness to ...

A.the way he makes extra time for sleep. B.his ability to recover from injury.
C.where he grew up. D. (all of the above)

4.The majority of climbers on Everest ...

A. need oxygen to finish their ascent. B.are accompanied.

C. make slow progress to the to D. (all of the above)

5.Kilian Jornet is unlike most Everest climbers because ...

A. he is a professional climber. B. he ascended faster.

C.he found the climb difficult. D. (all of the above)

6. In his training now, Kilian ...

A. demands a lot of himself. B. takes a lot of rest periods.

C. uses a coach. D. (none of the above)

7.Kilian Jornet is unlike most Everest climbers because ...

A. he is a professional climber. B. he ascended faster.

C. he found the climb difficult. D. (all of the above)

Text
The general assumption is that older workers are paid more in spite of, rather than because of, their productivity.
That might partly explain why, when employers are under pressure to cut costs, they persuade a 55-year old to take early
retirement. Take away seniority-based pay scales, and older workers may become a much more attractive employment
proposition. But most employers and many workers are uncomfortable with the idea of reducing someone’s pay in later
life – although manual workers on piece-rates often earn less as they get older. So retaining the services of older workers
may mean employing them in different ways. One innovation was devised by IBM Belgium. Faced with the need to cut
staff costs, and having decided to concentrate cuts on 55 to 60-year olds, IBM set up a separate company called Skill
Team, which re-employed any of the early retired who wanted to go on working up to the age of 60. An employee who
joined Skill Team at the age of 55 on a five-year contract would work for 58% of his time, over the full period, for 88%
of his last IBM salary. The company offered services to IBM, thus allowing it to retain access to some of the intellectual
capital it would otherwise have lost. The best way to tempt the old to go on working may be to build on such ‘bridge’
jobs: parttime or temporary employment that creates a more gradual transition from full-time work to retirement. Studies
have found that, in the United States, nearly half of all men and women who had been in full-time jobs in middle age
moved into such ‘bridge’ jobs at the end of their working lives. In general, it is the best-paid and worst-paid who carry on
working. There seem to be two very different types of bridge job-holder – those who continue working because they have
to and those who continue working because they want to, even though they could afford to retire. If the job market grows
more flexible, the old may find more jobs that suit them. Often, they will be self-employed. Sometimes, they may start
their own businesses: a study by David Storey of Warwick University found that in Britain 70% of businesses started by
people over 55 survived, compared with an overall national average of only 19%. But whatever pattern of employment
they choose, in the coming years the skills of these ‘grey workers’ will have to be increasingly acknowledged and
rewarded.

Question
1. In paragraph one, the writer suggests that companies could consider

A. abolishing pay schemes that are based on age. B. avoiding pay that is based on piece-rates.

C. increasing pay for older workers. D. equipping older workers with new skills.

2. Skill Team is an example of a company which

A. offers older workers increases in salary. B. allows people to continue working for as long as they want.

C. allows the expertise of older workers to be put to use. D. treats older and younger workers equally.

3. According to the writer, ‘bridge’ jobs

A. tend to attract people in middle-salary ranges. B. are better paid than some full-time jobs.

C. originated in the United States. D. appeal to distinct groups of older workers.

4. David Storey’s study found that

A. people demand more from their work as they get older. B. older people are good at running their own businesses.

C. an increasing number of old people are self-employed. D. few young people have their own businesses.

Test 3: RAIN MAKING

When it rains, it does not always pour. During a typical storm, a (41. COMPARE) ………….. small amount of the
lock-up moisture in each cloud reaches the ground as rain. So the idea that human intervention - a rain dance, perhaps -
might encourage the sky to give up a little (42. ADD).. water has been around since prehistoric times. More recently,
would-be rain makers have used a more direct procedure - that of throwing (43. VARY) ............. chemicals out of aero-
planes in an effort to wring more rain from the clouds, a practice known as "cloud seeding". Yet such techniques, which
were first developed in the 1940s, are (44. NOTORIETY) …….. difficult to evaluate. It is hard to (45. CERTAIN)
……….. for example, how much rain would have fallen anyway. So, despite much anecdotal evidence of the advantages
of cloud seeding, which has led to its adoption in more than 40 countries around the world, as far as scientists are
concerned, results are still (46. CONCLUSIVE) ……….... three years (47. RESEARCH) ……………. extensive and
(48. RIGOUR) ……………. That could be about to change. For the past have been carrying out the most evaluation to
date of are volutionary new technique that will substantially boost the volume of (49. RAIN) ............The preliminary (50.
FIND) …………of their experiments indicate that solid evidence ò the technique’s effectiveness is now within the
scientist’s grasp.

Test 4: CHEAP ACCESS TO SPACE

Charles Conrad went to the moon with Apollo 12 and circled the Earth in Skylab. But from now on, he is going to aim
high for himself. His company, Universal Space Lines, hopes to produce a more economic rocket that will be able to go
in space again and again.

"Cheap" is an important word in space technology nowadays and re-useable rockets will be a key way of controlling
costs. They will deliver things to orbits, bring stuff back to Earth and then go up again, perhaps with machinery for a
space factory, or even carrying tourists.

NASA, the U.S, government-owned space program, plans to develop such a rocket. However, the immediate priority
is missions to Mars, which will require different technology. So it is more likely that people outside the NASA program
will develop re- useable rocket design. Rick Tumlinson runs an independent organization called the Space Frontier
Foundation and firmly believes that it is time for business to get involved.

He sees the NASA program as a bit of a dinosaur. "25 years after the Wright Brothers, people could buy a
commercial plane ticket but many years after landing on the moon, we sat around watching old astronauts on TV talking
about the good old days."

So Tumlinson is also in business to prove a point. Space is our destiny, he says, so why not get on with it a bit more
eagerly? To this end, the SFF is holding a conference in Los Angeles shortly, to be called Space: Open for Business.

Charles Conrad is due to speak there. But his company is in fact only one of several that already have blueprints for
getting into space and back cheaply Rotary is working on something that would be launched like a rocket but return.

Another company, Kistler Aerospace, has similar plans; "Our goal is to become a delivery service to low Earth orbit
that will radically re-align the economics of doing business in space. Satellites will be our parcels: our vehicles will be
operated in repeated flights with air freights efficiency."

In 1997, the SFF ran a survey on the Internet, called "Cheap Access to Space", where it asked American
taxpayers for their views on the U.S space program and on what American's future priorities should be in space
transportation.

Their own view is that it is impossible for NASA, which is government-owned, to offer an "open frontier".
This is not a matter of budgets or schedules, but of fundamental purpose and design. NASA is "elitist and exclusive",
whereas the SFF believes in opportunities for everyone "a future of endlessly expanding new choices".

They would like to see "irreversible human settlement" in space as soon as possible and maintain that this will only
happen through free enterprise. "Building buildings and driving trucks is not what astronauts should be doing; that's what
the private sector does."
 Of course, the ex-astronaut and businessman Charles Conrad agrees. "I'm trying to get affordable space
transportation up and operative so that everybody can enjoy space. And by the way, the Japanese are hard at work
building a space hotel."

U.S government officials don't see the future for space tourism. Here again, private companies may well prove
them wrong. David Ashford, director of Bristol Spaceplanes Limited, once said that space tourism would begin ten years
after people stopped laughing at the concept. Recently, he added this striking comment: "people have stopped laughing."

If he is right, mass space travel will have arrived by 2050 and space tourism will have become a viable industry.
More importantly, the human race will have made serious progress in crossing that final frontier.