Stories for Reading Comprehension 4 Unit 3

abruptly
accommodation
baffled
beckoned
convinced
copious
crude
crumbled
disease
dramatically
dusk
emerged
encircled
enigma
entry
fermented
fingered
frantic
gleaned
head-shrinking
horizon
introverted
mood
nervous
press on
rainforests
remains
rituals
scant
shivers
subsisting
sufficiently
tracts
tribes
unexplored
violently
weather-beaten
whether


1. Why do you think head-hunting and head-shrinking, the activities of small tribes of tropical rainforests, send shivers down the spines of those in the so-called civilised countries while this does not occur when they carry on the same activities towards their own kind?
For instance, in England, when Charles II reclaimed the crown for his family, he exhumed the body of Oliver Cromwell, who had his father, Charles I, beheaded, and had Cromwell's head removed from the body and placed atop the Tower of London. After Henry VIII had Sir Thomas More executed, he ordered his head placed atop the Tower of London for a month, until More's daughter Margaret Roper retrieved it.

2. On what grounds does anthropology and ethnography attract the attention of the civilised countries? Why do you think anthropology enjoys a far greater popularity in Europe and the USA than it does in Russia?

3. Which do you think would rather be adopted by savage tribes during their contact with civilised world: fire-arms or a variety of simple games and dances?

4. Do you think this story could actually take place? Why?

1. Transform the voice of the sentence.

There are substantial areas of the dense tropical forests of Borneo in South-East Asia that remain relatively unknown by man.


2. Transform the sentence into indirect speech.

The headman raised his hand and shouted,"You put your left leg in. You put your left leg out and you shake it all about!"


3. Transform the sentence into direct speech.

About two months later the anthropologists learned that at the next full moon, the Butcher's Dance would take place.


4. Transform the sentence into 'there + to be' pattern.

At noon their behaviour became more and more bizarre.


5. Transform the sentence into state pattern.

In the early 1950's a German expert in cannibalism made contact with a tribe called the Makanorang.


6. Transform the sentence into action pattern.

Food was plentiful.


7. Transform the sentence from Complex Subject pattern.

There appeared to be a complete absence of weapons.


8. Transform the sentence into Complex Subject pattern.

It seemed that the German had become sure that the tribe had been visited by British colonialists in the 1930's.


9. Transform the sentence into Complex Object pattern.

Two weeks later the anthropologists were given a friendly welcome by the Makanorang.


10. Transform the sentence into Cleft pattern.

The British anthropologists were curious as there was nothing in their records about this meeting.


11. Transform the sentence into Conditional III pattern.

The anthropologists were ignored and the villagers became more and more introverted, spending hours and hours painting themselves.