A Warm Reception Promised at the Ice Hotel

Школьный этап Всероссийской олимпиады

Школьников по английскому языку для учащихся 9 - 11 классов

Учебный год

PART 1

LISTENING COMPREHENSION (20 POINTS)

Task 1.

You will hear an interview with an Australian girl called Verity, who has recently been on a student

exchangeprogramme. For each question 1‐6, choose the correct answer A, B or C.

1. Verity chose the Netherlands for her exchange programme because

A a friend had recommended it.

B one of her relatives was from there.

C she had always wanted to go there.

2. What did Verity find difficult about living in the Netherlands at first?

A sharing a bedroom

B getting up early

C cycling to school

3. What did Verity immediately notice about the Netherlands?

A The countryside was more varied than Australia.

B The buildings were how she’d imagined them.

C The weather was much colder than she’d expected.

4. What was different about the school in the Netherlands?

A It had better facilities.

B There was a wider range of subjects.

C The class size was much bigger.

5. Verity was surprised that students in the Netherlands

A knew very little about Australia.

B had never considered doing an exchange programme.

C had travelled to a lot of countries.

6. Verity recommends that students on an exchange programme should

A go to a place where they can speak the language.

B stay for six months.

C ask their parents to visit.

Task 2.

You will hear a boy called Jake talking to his classmates about a diving trip he recently did with his

family. For each sentence 7‐14, fill in the missing information in the numbered space. Write only

One word in each gap.

DIVING TRIP

7. The trip was very exciting because Jake was diving in (7) ……………….. water for the first time.

8. Jake’s only previous diving experience was training in a (8) …………..….. .

9. Jake went for his first sea dive off the coast of (9) ………..……. .

10. Jake’s (10) ………………… went into the water with him.

11. Jake says the best thing he saw under the water was a (11) ………..…… .

12. While they were swimming, Jake was afraid that there might be some (12) ………………. nearby.

13. However, he discovered that the big creatures he saw were (13) ………..……… .

14. Jake managed to do (14) ……………….. dives in total.

Task 3.

You will hear a conversation between a boy, Harry, and a girl, Laura, about wildlife photography.

Look at statements 15‐20 below. Decide if each statement is true or false. Put a tick (v) in the

Corresponding box.

PART 2

READING COMPREHENSION (20 POINTS)

Text1

Read a newspaper article and for questions 1—7 circle the answer А, В, С or D which you think fits best

A Warm Reception Promised at the Ice Hotel

QUEBEC CITY Monday January 1 (Reuters). - Canadian businessmen opened on Monday North America's first Ice Hotel and said 1,000 tourists had already signed up to spend a night in a chilly building made of ice and snow.

The hotel built of 4,500 tons of snow and 25 tons of ice, opened outside Quebec City in a place overlooking the St. Law­rence river and the Montmorency Falls which are higher than world well known Niagara Falls. New Year's Day opening fol­lowed a weekend snowstorm.

"The hotel is fully booked with 22 people in our six suites," Ice Hotel communications director Helene Barbeau told Reuters. "The staff unveiled the hotel on New Year's Eve and even slept in the ice beds," she said in an interview.

The Ice Hotel's facilities include a bar, a cinema and two art galleries, with exhibits made of sculpted ice about Canada's Great North and Inuit people, as well as executive suites com­plete with an ice bed. The cost — $100 per one person a night — includes a hot breakfast and a sleeping bag on top of animal fur for the ice bed.

The Canadian structure cost C$750,000 to build, including C$125,000 from the Quebec provincial government.

Most of the 1,000 people who have reserved rooms for the season are Americans who come from as far away as Texas, Flor­ida, California and Arkansas, but some also are tourists from South Africa, Japan, France, Germany and Britain. Those who reserved for Monday's opening came from New York, Maine, Washington and Montreal.

"We also expect 40,000 people to visit the site this winter," Barbeau said adding that the wedding of a local celebrity is to be held at the hotel on January 27.

The Ice Hotel will stay open for three months before the ice and snow melt in early April.

The idea of an ice hotel is being imported from Sweden, where what was advertised as the world's first ice hotel was built about ten years ago in Jukkasjarvi, a drive of seven hours from Stockholm.

The Quebec Ice Hotel (www.icehotel-canada.com) has a sur­face of 10,760 square feet, one quarter the size of its Swedish counterpart. It has a staff of 32 people.

The Ice Hotel intends to move permanently to the Duchesnay resort west of Quebec City next year. The new Ice Hotel should be able to accommodate 85 guests. It also will be the size of two football fields, four times larger than the current Ice Hotel and comparable in size to its Swedish counterpart.

"People will be able to do cross-country skiing, snowmobile riding and winter fishing," Barbeau said.

1. The first ice hotel in the world was built not far from…

A. Stockholm.

В Montreal.

С Quebec.

D Duchesnay resort.

2. The hotel opened

A before the snowstorm.

С at the weekend.

В after the snowstorm.

D before the weekend.

3. The Quebec provincial Government contributed into this structure

A C$750,000.

В C$1,000.

С C$125,000.

D C$40,000.

4. The Ice Hotel is situated in the place which is known for

A the wedding of a local celebrity.

В Winter Carnival.

С Niagara Falls.

D Canada's Great North

5. The new Ice Hotel will be

A the size of the present Ice Hotel.

В smaller than the present Ice Hotel.

С as large as a football field.

D larger than the present Ice Hotel.

Text2

You are going to read a magazine article about Barbara Cartland, a popular English writer. Choose from the statements 1—9 those which best summarises each part A—I of the article. There is one extra statement which you do not need to use.

1. She is one of the best-selling authors, even more popular than one well-known crime writer.
2. Cartland and her secretaries worked hard in her home
3. When she died she was two months away from her 99th birthday.
4. She was popular not only as a writer, she was also popular as an attractive woman and a lot of men proposed her.
5. She had an unfavourable opinion of journalists' and reporters' work.
6. Known as the Queen of Romance Cartland wrote not only love stories.
7. Her work was appreciated not only by ordinary people, she was given a British title of honour.
8. She was active in many other spheres of life.
9. Cartland was never far from the public eye.

Queen of Romance

A.Barbara Cartland became the world's best-selling author composing her romantic tales. Happy endings were a must for the Queen of Romance. Each title sold about a million of copies and there was a new title every two weeks. "For20 years, I've done a book a fortnight. Without fail, 600 words a day. Nobody else has done that," she once said.

В Cartland was born one of three children in Birmingham on July 9, 1901, in an upper-class but very poor family. Her father died in World War I. She published her first novel, Jigsaw, in 1923. The glamorous young novelist received marriage propos­als from 49 men before she married a man of one of Britain's noble families in 1927. It was not a fairytale match and they divorced after six years. In 1936 she married Hugh McCorquo-dale, by whom she had two sons. Her husband died in 1963.

С Her 723 works — from A Kiss for the King to Paradise in Penang— sold more than one million copies each in 36 languag­es, topping even crime writer Agatha Christie. Cartland's readers from every social level buy her books from Thailand to Eastern Europe. She said: "The reason I'm such a big seller is that the world is short of beauty."

D She described her Victorian mansion on 500 acres (200 hec­tares) north of London as a "factory" with half a dozen secretaries to whom she dictated her Books, and "the largest Xerox money can buy." "I work very hard and when I need a plot I say to God, give me a plot, and he sends me one in 24 ' hours," she said.

E In addition to romantic novels, Cartland wrote a number of biographies of European royal persons, sociological volumes, autobiographies and health guides promoting the use of vita­mins as the route to health: At 77 she recorded an album of love songs.

F She also turned her talents to politics, becoming a council­lor for the right-wing Conservative Party. She campaigned on behalf of gypsies and nurses, lectured on the danger of feminism and organised exhibitions.

G A keen supporter of the royal family, she blamed the media for poor publicity and said Britain without them would be­come "a rather boring little island with a flag". In her book "The History of Barbara Cartland and How I Want to Be Remembered", she counteracted bad publicity about her daughter Raine, stepmother of Britain's Princess Diana.

H In her last years she was an unforgettable figure. She usu­ally appeared in public wearing a mass of pink chiffon and heavily made-up. She lived a full and fulfilling life, which touched many people around the world. Women admired her, she was a feminist icon. She received so many letters from all over the world and she often gave answers to them: she wanted to give the world what it needs — more love and beauty.

I In 1991 she became a Dame of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to literature and her work for humanitarian and charitable courses. When she died in 2000, her friend said, "She was a character who was larger than life and a legend in her own time."

Text3

Read questions 1—6. Find the answers in the texts А—К from the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and put the correct letter in the box. There are some extra texts which you do not need to use.

1. This wild animal kills other small animals.

2. Women and children wear this type of hat tying it with strings under the chin.

3. This is a fruit tree with fruits eaten as nuts.

4. This is a green plant with feathery leaves and no flowers.

5. This hat with a wide brim is worn especially by American cowboys.

6. This is a vegetable with green leaves which tastes a little like onion.

A. almond— a tree, native to Asia and Northern Africa and having alternate simple leaves, pink flowers and leathery fruits with a nut inside.

В. badger— an animal which has black and white fur, lives in holes in the ground and is active at night.

С. kernel— the edible part inside the outer shell of a nut.

D. bonnet— a hat of cloth or straw (often with a wide brim), held in place by ribbons tied under the chin and worn by babies and women (especially in the past).

E. barley—a valuable grain, of the family of grass, used for food.

F. fern— any of numerous flowerless and seedless plants repro­ducing by spores.

G. ferret—a small fierce European animal with pointed nose, which catches rats and rabbits.

H. fez— a round red hat with flat top and no brim, worn chief­ly in the eastern Mediterranean.

I. heather—a low plant with small purple, pink, or white flowers which grows on the hills.

J. leek—an edible plant related to the onion having a white slender bulb and a flat dark green leaves.

К. stetson— a tall hat with a wide brim standing out round the head worn especially in the American West.

PART 3

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