English Reading Exercises for B1 – Storytelling

1. Complete the compound nouns with the words below.

bestseller      book      contract      culture      high      love      name      phone      social      time      TV

1   leisure …………………………

2   cell …………………………

3   ………………………… series

4   comic …………………………

5   ………………………… school

6   book …………………………

7   ………………………… list

8   pen …………………………

9   ………………………… media

10   pop …………………………

11   ………………………… story

2. Complete the text below with compound nouns from exercise 1. Sometimes you need the plural form.

My aunt writes novels, but not under her own name. She uses a 1………………….…. …………………….. . She started writing in her 2………………….…. …………………….. , but now she does it full-time. Her books are very popular and often appear on the 3………………….…. …………………….. . They are going to make one of them into a 4………………….…. …………………….. . It’s a 5………………….…. …………………….. about a teenage boy and girl. I can’t wait to watch it. My aunt has just got a new 6………………….…. …………………….. from her publisher, and has already started to write her next novel.

3. Read the text below. Are the sentences true (T) or false (F)?

1   The author believes that Twitter is a very bad idea.

2   A haiku is a type of modern short poem.

3   The epistolary novel contains a series of letters.

SHORT AND SWEET

People complain nowadays that the popularity of media like Twitter has reduced our ability to read for long periods of time and to write properly. 1………. It’s also true that tweets are written by normal people, not professional authors, and that sometimes little attention is paid to correct grammar and spelling in digital messages. But are the new media only bad news for our literary tradition?

2………. In Japan, for example, the most popular form of poetry has long been the haiku, in which every word counts. A haiku is a poem with exactly seventeen syllables. Not words, but syllables. 3………. So with this method of writing, a lot of meaning has to be conveyed in a short space. This philosophy of ‘less is more’ made Japan the natural place for the birth of the cell phone novel with its very short chapters.

Other storytelling traditions using shorter forms have also been adapted to our modern tastes. The epistolary novel is a book written as a series of letter, or sometimes diaries. The genre used to be admired in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 4………. Authors of teenage novels now often use emails, diary entries, text messages and cartoons to tell a story.

So perhaps these shorter styles of writing are not bad for literature as a whole. Perhaps they are just modern ways of expressing the age-old tradition of storytelling.

4. Read the Reading Strategy. Then match sentences A-F with gaps 1-4 in the text. There are two extra sentences.

A   That’s short!

B   Nobody reads books any more, do they?

C   They argue, for example, that fewer people read novels and write letters.

D   There is, in fact, a lot we can learn from other cultures with a different writing tradition.

E   Now writers are using this genre again, but with a modern day twist.

F   Literature has suffered as a result.

Extra exercises

1. Read the Strategy. Then read the text below. Are statements 1-4 true (T), false (F), or not given (NG)?

Anna Pavlova (1881 – 1931) was a famous Russian ballet dancer. She first fell in love with ballet when she was taken to see a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. She was eight years old at the time. Pavlova studies ballet at the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg. Students there had to get up early and have a cold shower. Lessons started after breakfast and continued until the evening, with very few breaks during the day.

1   Anna Pavlova was born in 1882.

2   She was born in St Petersburg.

3   She had her first ballet lesson when she was eight.

4   Anna had lots of free time at the Imperial Ballet School.

2. Read the text. Are the sentences true (T), false (F), or not given (NG)?

Still life

The other day, I was walking through the city when a silver statue caught my eyes. It was a statue of a man in a suit looking into the distance. I wondered why so many people were standing there looking at it. Suddenly it turned its head and looked right at me before tapping me on the shoulder with its umbrella. I jumped and laughed. It was, of course, a living statue – and it had scared the life out of me!

Living statues are street performers who make their money by dressing up to look as if they’re made of stone, metal, glass or wood. They stand still for long periods of time, moving now and then to remind people that they are actually real people. It’s an artistic tradition that started more than five hundred years ago, when groups of actors started performing tableaux vivants. These were still and silent groups of people in costumes who were arranged to represent a particular scene or event.

Nowadays, most living statues work alone. Matt Walters has been working as a living statue for over 25 years. He usually dresses as a chimney sweep, covered from head to toe in very dark grey paint. He does all his make-up himself. ‘Covering myself in paint and using the right stuff to get it all off again afterwards costs me about £10 a day,’ he says, but he won’t tell me how much he earns as a living statue when I ask him.

I hope it’s a lot. Working as a human statue is a demanding job. Passers-by can be rude, and living statues are regularly pushed or even attacked by members of the public. Standing still for long periods of time isn’t easy and it can cause health problems. Walters is helped by the fact that he’s a marathon runner. He can drop his heart rate down to just 28 beats per minute, so people don’t see him breathe.

Living statues have a lot of fun too. Chris Clarkson performs as a Greek statue who has a fountain of water. ‘One day, I could see two children who wanted me to splash them,’ he says. ‘So I did, and the audience loved it. I got a lot of money. Then their dad came to collect them, so I decided to get him too. It turned out not to be their dad – but a police officer! Luckily, he had a good sense of humour.’

1   The silver man with an umbrella was the first living statue the writer had ever seen.

2   The only reason that living statues move is because they get so uncomfortable.

3   A make-up artist covers Matt in paint.

4   The writer asked Matt Walters how much money he makes as a living statue.

5   People don’t always treat living statues kindly.

6   Matt Walters has trained as an actor.

7   He can control how fast he breathes.

8   The police officer was angry when Chris Clarkson threw water at him.