Stories for Reading Comprehension 4 Unit 7


1. arguing
2. assuring
3. cockroaches
4. colonel
5. complexities
6. damp
7. denounced
8. embrace
9. evoked
10. expectantly
11. eyebrows
12. feared
13. grazing
14. harsh
15. incredulously
16. inefficient
17. is set
18. labour camps
19. leisurely
20. lush
21. magnificent
22. malt
23. nuclear disarmament
24. paused
25. perverse
26. rasps
27. respond
28. roaring
29. savour
30. tiny
31. turned away




1. Transform the voice of the sentence.

The story was set at a time when the KGB, the Russian secret police, were a much frightening force in the USSR.


2. Transform the sentence into indirect speech.

The harsh voice of the colonel rasps, " Petrov! You are under arrest!"


3. Transform the passage into direct speech.

The British and French diplomats raised their eyebrows in disbelief.


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

The British diplomat followed, "For me, happiness is found in the home."


5. Transform the sentence into state pattern.

The story takes place in a restaurant in New York.


6. Transform the sentence into action pattern.

Happiness was to sit there and leisurely sip the fine wines of the Rhone valley.


7. Transform the sentence from Complex Subject pattern.

The French diplomat was likely to be first to respond.


8. Transform the sentence into Complex Subject pattern.

There is a knock at the door at five o'clock in the morning. (happen)


9. Transform the sentence into Complex Object pattern.

And I said to the colonel, "I'm Kirlov. Petrov lives upstairs."


10. Transform the sentence into Cleft pattern.

The diplomats were having an informal meal following a United Nations conference on nuclear disarmament.


11. Change the sentence into Conditional III pattern.

Soviet citizens lived in fear of being denounced, arrested, and sent to labour camps.


12. Transform the sentence into inverted emphatic pattern.

A philosophical waiter, passing their table, asked "But what is happiness, gentlemen?"


13. Transform the sentence into what + subject + predicate + to be + to inf pattern.

For me, happiness is to be in my tiny two-bedroomed flat in the centre of Moscow, listening to the neighbours arguing through the paper thin walls.


14. Change the verb into an analytical one.

I rushed to the bedroom and woke up my wife and children.